CHURCH PLANTING

Church Planting is one of LAC’s 7 Ministry Networks.

We believe it is a divine mandate for the body of Christ to multiply disciples and to raise up the church everywhere it is not. Since our conception, LAC has produced 218,335 places of worship for 30,262,608 members and adherents in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, in spite of the best efforts of nationals and missionaries, we are confronted with the reality that 83% of Latin America and the Caribbean is spiritually lost. Our challenge is to evangelize and to plant churches to disciple 503 million people in this region of the world.

Urbanization has changed the landscape of Latin America. It has also increased the complexity of the church planting task. Civil wars, guerrilla movements, industrialized farming, and economic upheaval across the region during the last third of the 20th Century pushed waves of people off the land and into the cities. During that period, the urban population of Latin America grew by more than 300%, a mass migration producing squatter and shanty towns of hundreds of thousands of people living at and below the poverty line surrounding all of the major cities.

Today 82% percent of Latin Americans live in urban areas. Latin America and the Caribbean is now home to six mega cities of 10 million or more; fifty-four more have populations in excess of 1 million, and an additional 672 urban centers have more than 100 thousand people living in them. 60% of Latin America’s poor live in cities, while a growing middle class ($10 to $50 per day) make up about 30% of the population. Urban growth and outward migration have left the rural areas decimated and impoverished.

In all of the major cities we have a deficit in the ratio of churches to population. These deficits range from 1:25,000 to 1:238,000. New Spirit-filled churches provide the most effective means of reaching the spiritually lost living in urban Latin America and the Caribbean. We will continue in the power of the Spirit to mobilize workers from all over the world to establish the Kingdom of God throughout the region.

Explore opportunities to join church planting efforts by clicking the link below.